>Dave Boland wrote:
> I was told about the Ruby language, and have been doing some homework on
> it.  So far I'm impressed with its OO design and other high level
> features.  Two things I will need (and have not found so far) is an easy
> to use GUI (the app will have a GUI), . . .

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> [Gtk, Fox, TK, FLTK, QT] I hope that one of these suits your needs.
> 

Actually I would say the greatest development in cross-platform gui building
has been done using Flash: Windows, Mac and Linux. There is a huge developer
base, many discussion lists and tutorials, as well as classes and books, so
it's easy to learn or get help while you learn. Designing is all visual --
drag this checkbox onto your screen, position it where you want, enter the
label text, name it; next item. Plus Flash files are _small_ -- they were
designed for downloading over dialup connections. Most particularly Flash
builds on the browser-induced notion that the site (or app) is responsible
for the look, not the gui-builder tool, so there's little platform-look
resistance.

Of course Flash isn't designed primarily for making gui frontends to apps,
but Rich Lyman has posted very interesting work at lithinos.com, showing how
trivial it is to connect a Flash frontend to a Ruby program. The Flash file
could then be set to run in the free and widely available Flash player or in
any of the hundreds of millions of Flash-enabled web browsers.

Plus, if you already know a little Flash (e.g., my own situation), why learn
another tool just for building a frontend?

Roger Sperberg


Note: Like QT, Flash is a commercial product (list price about $500); you
can buy copies much reduced on eBay.